1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates generally to designing integrated circuits (ICs), and more specifically to reusable custom structured interconnect designs.
2. Description of Related Art
Routing is an integral part of the integrated circuit design, but due to the intractable nature of routing problems, batch routers rarely achieve a truly optimal result. Instead, they depend on heuristics to achieve a result that is “good enough,” often focusing on objectives such as cost. Custom routes are often at odds with these objectives because they frequently require features that are not considered by batch routers, such as symmetry or redundancy. Redundancy in particular is a problem because it is inherently not “necessary” from the perspective of the batch router and thus is a cost that would be reduced. Because of this, customizable routing is generally performed manually, which is tedious and time-intensive. Furthermore, reusing carefully-crafted structured interconnects for similar layouts usually requires significant adjustments that are similarly time consuming.